Microbiólogo y genetista de la Leland H. Hartwell

Leland H. Hartwell is a microbiologist and geneticist born the 30th of October, 1939 in Los Angeles, California.

He started his career in 1957 in the California Institute of Technology, convinced in studying a physics engineering, but after taking a biology course with Bob Edgar, he decided to study something related with biology.

After finishing his career, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he obtained his Ph.D. in microbiology on 1964. During the next year, he realized his postdoctoral studies in the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, and from 1966 to 1968 he worked as a genetics teacher in the University of California.

Since very young, Hartwell studied the cellular cycle of the yeast, and in 1970, he began isolating temperature-sensitive mutants and analyzing them for macromolecule synthesis and cell division at the restrictive temperature. He discovered more than 100 genes that were involved in the cellular division cycle, which he called "CDC genes".

Later on, Paul Nurse discovered that one of these genes was responsible of starting each and every one of the cellular cycle. This gene was called the "Start" gene or CDC2.

Along with his two colleagues Hunt and Nurse, Hartwell proved that throughout evolution, cells have conserved the same essential genes to reproduce. This also helped in the understanding of the mechanisms that regulate the replication of the cells, and thereby helped in the understanding of how cancer cells are formed.

Hartwell also discovered some alert mechanisms in the cellular division cycle which he called checkpoints. Without the checkpoints, cells would turn very sensible to genetic damages, and this would go hand in hand with the proliferation of a cancer.

These discoveries made Hartwell and his colleagues receive the 2001 Physiology and Medicine Nobel Prize.

Nowadays, Hartwell is a genetics teacher in the University of Washington and also is the CEO of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

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